Standing on an electric scooter could have you landing on your head

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2022-09-21 09:01

International

CC:0

Chinese researchers say that the way we stand on electric scooters sets us up for head or brain injuries, and how fast they can travel plays an important role in causing them. The team recreated a series of typical accident scenarios via computational methods - such as collisions with fixed obstacles or falls from mechanical failure - and investigated the risk to the riders' noggins. They say that both solo- and two-wheeled electric scooters caused the same injuries, but the falling posture of the rider exerts a distinct effect on the head and/or brain injury. They found that half of the riders had a 50% probability of a fractured skull, and a few of them had a 50% risk of a severe brain injury. Generally, a higher speed played an important role in producing an injury, and how severe that injury was, they add.

Media release

From: The Royal Society

Numerical investigation of the rider’s head injury in typical single-ESS (electric self-balancing scooter) accident scenarios

The number of electric self-balancing scooters (ESSs) related traffic accidents has been increasing in the past years., The rider’s head injury is the most frequent injury type. In this article, we reconstructed several typical single-ESS accident scenarios via computational methods and comprehensively evaluated the risk of riders’ head/brain injury. We found that solo- and two-wheeled ESSs do not have clear differences in head kinematics and injury risks, the falling posture of the rider exerts a distinct effect on the head/brain injury, and the ESS speed plays an important role in producing the head/brain injury.

Attachments

Note: Not all attachments are visible to the general public. Research URLs will go live after the embargo ends.

Research The Royal Society, Web page The URL will go live after the embargo ends

Journal/
conference: Journal of the Royal Society Interface

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: Changsha University of Science and Technology, China

Funder: This work was supported by Hunan Province Natural Science Fund, China (grant no. 2021JJ30721), Department of Education of Hunan Province (grant nos. 21B0324 and 21A0193), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant nos. 52172399, 52005054 and 51875049) and Hunan Key Research and Development Program, China (grant no. 2020SK2099).

Media Contact/s

Contact details are only visible to registered journalists.